What I was reading in 2018

January
The Crying of Lot 49 , Thomas Pynchon
Silk Parachute, John McPhee

February
White Rage, Carol Anderson
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib

March/April/May
Pet Sematary, Stephen King
A lot of mysteries involving a cat detective
The Jessica Darling books, on a loop

June
Draft No. 4, John McPhee
The Cheese Monkeys, Chip Kidd

July
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee
Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell Jr.

August
The Colossus of New York, Colson Whitehead
The Body, Stephen King
A Bad Idea I’m About to Do, Chris Gethard
Yes Please, Amy Poehler

September/October/November
The Disappointment Artist, Jonathan Lethem
The Idiot, Elif Batuman
Night Moves, Jessica Hopper
”The Real Inspector Hound”, Tom Stoppard

December
Circe, Madeline Miller

Wow, typing that was time travel. I remember reading Mrs. Bridge on freezing cold subway 1 train cars, traveling at weird times to avoid rush hour, tucked into corner seats, upper arm pressing into the cold metal of the car. I remember reading Colossus of New York, also on the 1 train, heart hammer hammer hammering with love and recognition, yes, New York, yes, love, yes, this city, back home, at last. Again with The Disappointment Artist – Hoyt Street! home! … while at the same time my parents were packing up my childhood home. I remember reading The Idiot and feeling light and airy and bamboozled, laughing with delight over this book that was so weird and so funny and thinking how long it had been since I felt like that. In fact 2018 was spangled with books that – and I don’t think this is overstating it – changed things for me. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Hanif Abdurraqib, my god, what a writer and thinker), How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (not a week goes by – 2 years later – that I don’t think of Alexander Chee’s Roses, or his foxes, his fortunes), White Rage, which changed the way I understood US history and my own poor and limited understanding of it, which I still think about most weeks,The Body, which I had looked for for years as a teenager, and then, my god again, John McPhee. My favorite writer and I only met his work two years ago and now it’s the sort of thing where I buy any of his books on sight, I don’t care if I’m interested in the subject matter or the form, I just want to read what he writes. And then, then – Circe. That book changed something so deep in me and I have pressed it into the hands of so many people in my life and just – the idea of a woman who gets to grow into herself again and again and again, ever-changing, ever learning, shedding men like snakeskin…

2018 was the year I moved back to New York from Chicago. The year Geebie, died. She died the day before I moved, and so I washed my bathroom floors for the last time, heart broken, and panicked about late movers with half a mind, flew halfway across the country and then the next day turned around and drove almost the same distance back. It was the year I lived in Manhattan, in an apartment with no cooking gas, but plenty of leaks which in turn brought plenty of cockroaches. The year my parents were forced to leave their home of nearly 30 years, my childhood and only home. The year I crossed the East River again and again hauling pieces of my past in ikea bags and backpacks, crying softly on the 2/3 and 1. The year I turned 27. It was a year of so much, but even in the middle of being overwhelmed again and again all these books found me, worked their way inside me. Books I still think about so often it’s like I read them months ago, not years.